Posted on 09/08/2004 3:36:00 PM PDT by Destro
Posted on Sun, Aug. 22, 2004
Business books: 'Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas'
"Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas," by Lou Dobbs (Warner Business Books, 208 pages, $19.95)
Look out, Silicon Valley! Bangalore, India, is gaining on you. Some folks in India even believe that their country's version of Silicon Valley has already surpassed its California counterpart as a center for high-tech employment.
In his new book, "Exporting America," CNN's Lou Dobbs shows how strongly that belief is held in India with a headline from the Jan. 6, 2004, issue of The Times of India: "Silicon Valley Falls to Bangalore."
The story under that headline, Dobbs writes, bragged that Bangalore has 150,000 information-technology engineers compared with 130,000 in Silicon Valley. Dobbs believes that that story can't be written off as merely nationalistic exaggeration.
"India is only one of the many countries benefiting from the exporting of American jobs. But it has also been one of the most aggressive in pursuing professional-level jobs, from medical technicians to software programs. American companies have been all too happy to answer India's siren call of educated English-speakers willing to work at some of the world's lowest wages," Dobbs writes.
General Electric's Capital International Services, Dobbs points out, was one of the pioneers of outsourcing domestic operations to India. The company, Dobbs writes, employs 1,300 at its four centers in India and says it saves about $400million annually by not having Americans do those jobs.
"The people there write software; they review invoices and insurance claims; they do market analysis. CIS also offers its services to other American companies looking for outsourced resources," Dobbs writes.
Although India lags behind other Asian countries in manufacturing, it has a leg up, according to Dobbs, in the service sector and is a magnet for some of America's highest-paying jobs.
"There are programmers all over the world, but the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs) are turning out thousands of these programmers a year. They are men and women who are well-educated, speak impeccable English, and are thrilled to make $10,000 a year," Dobbs writes.
GE, as Dobbs makes clear in abundant detail, is only one of many companies outsourcing high-tech and professional jobs to India and other parts of the world where wage expectations are lower. Among the others spotlighted by Dobbs for outsourcing jobs to India, the Philippines, Romania, Ireland, Poland and other countries are IBM, SAS Institute, Intel, Microsoft, Perot Systems, Apple, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Early in the book Dobbs delivers a broadside against the general trend of shipping jobs offshore. He says it is undermining the American middle class, putting Americans out of work, forcing Americans to work harder and longer for less pay, devastating some communities and depriving governments at all levels of the tax revenue for upgrading public education and providing other essential goods and services.
Dobbs, whose views on shipping jobs offshore have been under continual attack by advocacy groups and consultants for multinational corporations, takes the view that corporations who send jobs offshore are firing their own customers, because American workers will eventually find themselves unable to purchase the goods and services being exported back to America by American companies.
"India can provide our software; China can provide our toys; Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan make our cars. But at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what will Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one I've asked in government, business or academia has been able to answer those questions," Dobbs writes.
- Cecil Johnson,
Knight Ridder Tribune
No, you didn't, but it explains quite a bit about your frustration over your salary and career opportunities.
Regards.
good for you. I got a scholarship to college. goody goody for me.
now what about everybody else?
Unless they have generational access to the power players, they don't stand a chance.
Politics is a very undemocratic game.
I am actually doing very well, this has nothing to do with me.
its the same thing I see all the time at work (and I am guessing you do also). The US managers have contempt for the skills of any "inexperienced" entry level americans, but run blindly and embrace offshore workers they have never seen and know nothing about.
You mocked a man who won a Tony for backing The Producers and Smokey Joes Cafe, the man who started Century (baby products), Cap Toys (Spin Pop any one?), etc., etc., It is your worldview that engineers and techies, by virtue of knowing something nobody else knew like ten years ago are better?
The rest of the world is just playing catch up. They are economies of dupication, not innovation. If you want to be really scared, keep an eye on the Japanese inventor who devised a manufacturing process using corn to make clothes that need to no sewing. You might want to laugh at him, too.
Being from a huge corn producing state, I'm thrilled. Thanks.
"Why does CNN kiss the ground the DNC walks on?
>>I pay the US equivalent of about $7.69 an hour for 10 hours of work per day and I get motivated, dedicated and locally well-paid employees.<<
What country are you in?
There is a fundamental difference between technological improvements such as you cite, and movement of productive assets and jobs to international competitors.
The present moves will injure us, and badly.
And there is a plus according to the macro planners, I bet. Keeps inflation low, less money chasing goods and services.
I believe that today "full employment" is not the goal, but rather an unemployment rate that keeps inflation manageable is the goal.
RE: anti-"free traders" are socialists
Oh yeah?! So's your old man.
Above it all IMO are the Davos, Switzerland, U.N., and other internationalists and their "raise everyone's boat" one-world socialist schemes. Why else would DLC New Democrat Third Way "progressives" buy into such capitalist things as "Americans do not have a right to a job" (in so many words) and labor arbitrage? They intend to manage globalization based upon rules-based (their rules) "free trade." They need "greedy" corporations' market economy to create prosperity in developing countries. IMO, American workers are paying for the developing world's free lunch and tomorrow's world socialist government -- and that after as taxpayers the workers helped pay for developing countries' infrastructures to support today's modern facilities. IMO.
"Free traders" scrambling to get to developing countries are the one-world socialists' useful idiots.
Enjoy your wealth "free traders," except for the truly wealthy you are not likely to keep it long -- oh, and thanks for the one-world Third Way, Marxist government. Coming soon.
What does your business sell and who/where are your customers?
indeed, it seems that most freepers won't be happy until every american has an $8/hr service job. I just do not understand what is wrong with these people. Middle class private sector workers are the backbone of the Republican party. If we dilute that sector - the more people who move down the income scale, or who hold jobs where their compensation is provided in whole or in part by government (municipal workers, education, health care) - the more Democratic voters we create.
Dobbs is such a sellout! This guy knows, if he's worth his salt, that it's "union greed" that is shipping American jobs overseas.
Imperial Spain was there in 16th century. Do not look farther.
tech jobs are unionized? where? show me an AFL-CIO chapter for programmers, or tech support people, or semiconductor designers.
Girlie man Dobbs cashing in with his tome...
There's nothing wrong with "exporting" jobs especially when in return we create new customers for our products and services.
I will say this: Corporations have no choice in many instances but to export jobs: over regulated, over socialized, over compensated and protected workers here would lead to stagnation if they didn't.
Damn. Now the push for replacing the income tax with a national sales tax makes sense. They know we won't be earning anything worth taxing, so they'll take it out of the other end.
Please, please, tell me how the better US education system would provide IT engineers able to support themselves at 10K a year? I know as a true freetrader you will not answer this basic question, so I am not holding my breath.
If you think that needing more than 10K/year to get by is a result of fat and laziness, how lazy and fat must be CEOs who do this outsourcing?
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